


shared and quiet understandings

by Sonofthebattle



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Keith and Shiro are Siblings, Kuron is Shiro (Voltron)'s Clone, Kuron's name is Ryou, Let Shiro Nap, M/M, Minor Matt Holt/Shiro, Shiro (Voltron) Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-25 22:13:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13222287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sonofthebattle/pseuds/Sonofthebattle
Summary: Some missions are harder than others. Sometimes, Shiro just really needs a nap.Keith worries. Ryou understands. Matt helps.





	shared and quiet understandings

 

If there was a clock, an actual working earthly clock, on this castleship, Keith is sure it would read somewhere after 3 a.m. 

The latest battle upon Xerio had been nothing short of hellish for the entire Voltron team. Their attempt to unseat pockets of Galran resistance that festered in smaller corners of the galaxy was a small conquest, but one Shiro had been determined not to side-step. Allura had been more focused on the the larger planet and systems, but Shiro had insisted.

“No matter the size of the system, those people deserve liberation as much as anyone else,” he said to them when Allura had tried to press the issue. He’d glanced down at this prosthetic arm and clenched his fist. He never voiced those opinions, but Keith knew, just from being around the man, that he was thinking of his own time as a captive.

The rest of his team, not matter how confoundingly dense Keith could find them at times regarding tack, had become something of a family between the group of them and seemed to read Shiro’s unsaid need just as readily as Keith did.

Xerio had been passed on their way to Dlremota, one of the largest planets in the Aracan system. It was a tiny planet, historically popular in the local systems for its agricultural uses. The Galra may have assumed that it’s small stature and rural resources would have it bypassed by rebels and Voltron alike. It was precisely the type of place Shiro had been determined to liberate if at all possible.

What they couldn’t have known was that Xerio was a mud-soaked wasteland with no people left to defend. The only ones left on the planet were Galran soldiers, but it was too late to pull back then. The fight had been nearly a day long, muddy, bloody and a thousand other unpleasant adjectives that Keith didn’t have the mental capacity to consider any more. All that, to find no survivors at the end of it all.

Keith had never wanted a shower so badly in his life. 

But now, his mind had one focus as he walked the long gleaming halls of the castleship.

Finding Shiro.

Their leader had disappeared shortly after Alllura’s final debriefing after the Xerio disaster (Lance’s words) and Keith had been too-preoccupied with his own disarray to look for him until now. Now, when he is kicking himself in hindsight.

It’s been a tough day for them all. A kill-or-be-killed situation is possibly the worst kind of situation to subject Shiro to, even if he is the most equipped to handle it. The man and mentor that Keith remembers from their early Garrison days would rather bury himself than admit to self-weakness, especially at the expense of his team. Shiro does everything, up to and including sacrificing himself, for the good of the team. If they still lived in a normal world on earth, Shiro would have had access to help after escaping his alien prison. He would have had a professional to help deal with his PTSD, a doctor for his prosthetic, something medical to help with the flashbacks. He’d have had help.

But out here, in the black of space, they have very little. Mental health isn’t exactly first on a list of priorities when you’re attempting to unseat the galaxy from a centuries old dictator, Keith has found. They don’t have a lot of downtime to being with, and Shiro doesn’t exactly like to sit talk details about the perils of being a Galra captive.

It’s probably not made much better by the fact that he can’t even  _ remember  _ things.

There a lot of things in Keith’s life that he regrets. They’re not what most people, (i.e. Lance) would assume. He regrets not being there when his father died, not tearing Iverson a new one when he’d insisted that Shiro was lost to space. He regrets not finding Shiro sooner, sparing him any additional pain. He regrets that they can’t take a day to let the five of them rest, to lie in the sun and forget that the damned galaxy depends on them and their lions.

Shiro doesn’t even remember half of the things he’s done and when he does, it’s usually in some awful flashback sequence at a highly inconvenient time. He likely regrets the few that he does remember.

But Shiro never complains.

He doesn’t come late to practice, he doesn’t bury his head in the sand and moan. He encourages the rest of them through whatever struggles or hardships they seem to be having, talks Lance through his homesickness, Hunk through his timidness, Pidge through her low points. He is always there with a smile and encouraging hand, whether it’s first thing in the morning or deep in the night. He’s their steady pillar, a light in their darkest nights.

But after Shiro’s latest excursization into Galra hands, the whole business with his clone, and subsequently being returned to them through Matt, has been not something Keith may have expected.

He doesn’t regret that, honestly. He wishes he could have spared Shiro the additional captivity, but thankfully, Shiro doesn’t seem to remember it at all. The rebels found him aboard a Galra ship by pure chance, unconscious and chained inside something resembling a tube in a science lab.

The Shiro they’d been living with, the clone, hadn’t even been aware of his own disposition until Shiro and Matt returned to them. Once they found his internal programing through the prosthetic and ensured there were no further protocols that might harm the team, Shiro had extended the hand to have him stay on as a member of not just the team, but as family.

Keith often thought of him as a twin, Shiro’s estranged twin. They’d recently begun to look vaguely different: Ryou kept his hair shorter while Shiro let his bangs grow out floppier, Ryou dressed more casual and Shiro more formal. Ryou’s prosthetic arm was more seamlessly grafed than Shiro’s own and didn’t seem to phase him the way it did his twin. But, Keith figured, it had always been a part of him.

Once they’d gotten past the ‘cloning phase,’ it had become obvious that Matt’s return and Ryou’s inclusion did a world of good for Shiro. He talked more, laughed more, seemed more laid back with Matt and, surprisingly, Ryou  in particular. It must have done him good, to have someone closer to his own age with similar life experiences, Keith thought. To have someone to relate to, someone to share the horrors with because he understood them too.

Keith was interrupted by his own thoughts by nearly plowing over someone else in his pathway. He startled up from where he’d been staring at the ground to Ryou’s wide grey eyes.

“Whoa there buddy,” he said, arms out as if to grab Keith incase he took off. “Where’re are you off to?”

Keith resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Sometimes he wondered how’d they’d ever taken Ryou for Shiro in the first place.

“Looking for your other half,” he responded, quirking Ryou a look that he hoped was at least half teasing. His humor had a bad habit of missing it’s mark. Ryou, thankfully, was at least Shiro-like in some ways, and one of those was translating Keith-speak.

“He’s back there,” Ryou said, gesturing his head in the direction he’d just come from. “He’s okay now, if you’re worried. I was just checking myself.”

Keith ducked his head, a little embarrassed at being known so easily. It wasn’t always  _ that  _ easy having two Shiros around. “I was just...worried. After Xerio,” he muttered looking up to meet Ryou’s gaze.

Ryou smiled, grey eyes softening a bit from their usual mischief and settling into something more like understanding. “I know, I was worried too. It’s never a good thing for him, something like that.”

A senseless, bloody campaign with no victory and nothing to save. Something bloody well like that.

Ryou reached forward, slowly so Keith could see it, and gripped his right shoulder. It was the reassuring kind of thing an older brother would do, Keith thought. “Go on and see, if you need it. They’re both asleep now, so they won’t mind.”

“They?”

Ryou smiled again, held a finger to his lips and inclined his head back the way he came. Then he winked, the trademark mischief flooding back into his eyes and bounded off the way Keith had come from.

Keith watched his go for a second, then made a beeline for the room Ryou had indicated. It was a stupid, childish motion, that he needed to lay eyes on Shiro to make sure he was okay. But Keith had always been more of a visual than a mental learner, better with the physical than the theoretical. And, admittedly, not fantastic with emotion.

The room Ryou had indicated was the main lounge, an arena for a large monitor surrounded the generous sofas, blankets, pillows. It was one Allura usually referred to as the ‘common room’ and where the whole team gathered, on such rare occasions, to relax or destress.

Sprawled on the largest sofa, cocooned in a flood of blankets was Shiro and Matt. Shiro was nearly hidden under no less than three throws, his back to Keith with only the outline of his shoulders and tuft of white bangs visible. Matt was lying on his side, facing the door with his head pillowed atop where Shiro’s had emerged from the pile. His auburn hair was in complete disarray, mused to his face on one side and reaching for the stars on the other.

And his eyes were open.

There was not hint of sleepness lingering in them, as though he’d been awake the whole time. He very well may have been. Keith met his gaze steadily, a soft understanding between them. Keith had known of Matt at the Garrison, through Shiro, but they’d never been close.

But Shiro had been. And Keith had been learning more of that recently.

Matt blinked, smiled and tucked his neck a little tighter into the junction of Shiro’s head and shoulder, burrowing a bit deeper in the pillows. Shiro shifted slightly and Keith’s breath froze in his throat, but Shiro settled back again without a sound. Matt ducked his head behind Shiro’s shoulder to hide a grin. His hand slipped between the blankets to rub a circle on Shiro’s shoulder.

Shiro was...asleep. Relaxed. Taking a nap with his back to the door. Keith had had nearly an hour to imagine a thousand horrors after what they’d done today. He’d never quite imagined this.

A smile slipped across Keith’s face. He gave Matt a nod, and the other’s eyebrows climbed up for a second and then down. He blinked once, then twice, amber eyes bright and calm.

_ We’re fine _ , they say.  _ We’re okay now. Don’t worry. I’ve got this. _

Keith stepped back into the hallway, sliding the door shut as Matt’s eyes slid closed. He fought the smile off his face with little luck.

Shiro had been through a hell they didn’t understand, and one he didn’t remember. He didn’t have medicine, or a doctor, or a therapist. But he had Keith. He had Ryou. And now, he had Matt again. That just might be enough.  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I'm rarepair trash, it's true.


End file.
